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enAston Martin CIO - WannaCry pushed us into a cyber security refreshhttps://diginomica.com/aston-martin-cio-wannacry-pushed-us-cyber-security-refresh
<span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Aston Martin CIO - WannaCry pushed us into a cyber security refresh</span>
<span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><a title="View user profile." href="https://diginomica.com/author/sooraj-shah" class="username">Sooraj Shah</a></span>
<span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden">Tue, 06/02/2020 - 23:57</span>
<span class="a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_46 addtoany_list" data-a2a-url="https://diginomica.com/aston-martin-cio-wannacry-pushed-us-cyber-security-refresh" data-a2a-title="Aston Martin CIO - WannaCry pushed us into a cyber security refresh"><a class="a2a_button_twitter"></a><a class="a2a_button_facebook"></a><a class="a2a_button_linkedin"></a><a class="a2a_button_reddit"></a><a class="a2a_button_buffer"></a><a class="a2a_button_flipboard"></a></span>
<dl class="node__summary summary">
<dt class="summary__label">Summary: </dt> <dd class="summary__content">
The huge cyber-attack prompted the company to make changes – and SentinelOne proved itself when Aston Martin was hit by ransomware during the POC stage<br />
</dd>
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<figcaption>(Image sourced via Aston Martin )</figcaption>
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<p dir="ltr">When the devastating WannaCry ransomware attack took place in May 2017, luxury car manufacturer Aston Martin Lagonda paid close attention to the impact on so many businesses around the world.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Luckily, the company was not affected by the attack at all, but it led Steve O'Connor, Aston Martin's director of information technology, to have a thorough look at how the company avoided being affected by WannaCry and other similar attacks. He said:</p>
<blockquote><p dir="ltr">We took a real strong look at our security posture and what we were doing as a team and as a business and how we had secured all of our IT services and data. It took a few months to realise how we were okay at some things and where we could improve.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Anti-malware was an area that the company hadn't invested much time or energy on, so O'Connor and his team investigated what the business had in place up until that point; a legacy anti-malware solution that he preferred not to name. He said that when this product was tested, there wasn't a lot of information being sent back from it nor alerts, which could have indicated that the company was already protected.</p>
<p dir="ltr">However, they believed this may have been a false-positive picture, and so the team carried out some benchmarking with the existing anti-malware client. He said:</p>
<blockquote><p dir="ltr">We segregated some devices and tested them, and it performed abysmally.</p>
</blockquote>
<p dir="ltr">It became clear that the luxury car brand had to search for a new anti-malware product.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Aston Martin worked with a third-party provider to help it to find the right technologies; it usually approaches several companies within the same space to get a representative picture of what kind of products are out there - and it used this method to get an idea of the cyber security market.</p>
<p dir="ltr">After narrowing the number of potential solutions to four, O'Connor and his team put the vendors to the test. One of the vendors didn't make it to the next stage as the their product didn't work with the workloads Aston Martin was running within the business. O'Connor explained:</p>
<blockquote><p dir="ltr">Our workloads are a mix of very simple for standard office-type people right through to highly complex workloads on high-power workstations to do things like design, CAD, CAE and then on to the likes of the servers as well, which are predominantly Wintel based, covering everything from applications right through to file stores.</p>
</blockquote>
<p dir="ltr">The first vendor didn't have a solution that was consistent across all types of workloads.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The remaining three vendors moved on to the next stage, which involved a subsection of every type of workload - essentially a pilot group representing a cross-section of the business. O'Connor said:</p>
<blockquote><p dir="ltr">We were immediately bombarded by two of the remaining vendors with so many alerts and information coming through meaning the small security team we had was overwhelmed within a day or so. Working with the vendors, we realised that a lot of these were false positives which were generating more work for us.</p>
</blockquote>
<p dir="ltr">SentinelOne's product meanwhile was working more consistently, according to O'Connor - although there were false positives, there weren't as many as the other two vendors.</p>
<h2 dir="ltr">Giving SentinelOne a test drive</h2>
<p dir="ltr">Remarkably, while this evaluation process was ongoing, one of Aston Martin's remote sites was hit with an actual ransomware attack. O'Connor's team took advice from all three vendors in how to deal with this. He said:</p>
<blockquote><p>SentinelOne were probably the most simple to deal with, they were willing to get on board and help us with it, and so we got the go ahead with them to deploy their product on everything in that site.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Bearing in mind we were still in a test phase - they deployed it in a few hours, and all of a sudden, all of the ransomware started to come down, [SentinelOne's product] started cleaning up all of the devices - there was very little input from us. There was some clean-up required from us at the end but they did a fantastic job of nuking the ransomware outbreak at the time and ensuring it didn't get outside of that remote site.</p>
</blockquote>
<p dir="ltr">After this, it was a no brainer for O'Connor and his team to opt for SentinelOne.</p>
<p dir="ltr">He emphasised that while SentinelOne's technology proved to be the best fit for Aston Martin, a lot relied on the culture at the cyber security company too - with positive interactions with staff members and their expertise being particularly important.</p>
<p dir="ltr">This was key as Aston Martin wanted to ensure that the product would not get in the way of its users - particularly its engineers and designers. O'Connor said:</p>
<blockquote><p dir="ltr">We wanted a platform that was simple to use and almost invisible to the users, but that would give us complete confidence and security.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2 dir="ltr">How this fits into the CIO's role</h2>
<p dir="ltr">Aston Martin doesn't have a CISO, and O'Connor's remit therefore covers everything in IT from development, applications and systems to supporting systems deployed by vendors and managing cloud deployments. Cyber security is now one of the key areas that O'Connor is involved with.</p>
<blockquote><p dir="ltr">Cyber security is one of those things that has appeared out of nowhere in the last four or five years and it's now going to be one of the key focuses.</p>
</blockquote>
<p dir="ltr">This is because Aston Martin's intellectual property - including new car programmes for example - are perhaps the most valuable assets to the company.</p>
<p dir="ltr">In addition, with incoming EU regulations around the cyber security required for connected cars, Aston Martin not only has to ensure that it adheres to these rules, but that its supply chain is also adopting the same processes as the car manufacturer.</p>
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<span class="categories__label">Read more on: </span> <ul class="categories__list">
<li class="categories__item"><a href="https://diginomica.com/category/governance/security" hreflang="en">Security</a></li>
<li class="categories__item"><a href="https://diginomica.com/category/digital-enterprise/use-cases" hreflang="en">Use cases</a></li>
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Wed, 03 Jun 2020 06:57:04 +0000Sooraj Shah22302 at https://diginomica.comHow the Pension Protection Fund is using the cloud to transform IT provisionhttps://diginomica.com/how-pension-protection-fund-using-cloud-transform-it-provision
<span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">How the Pension Protection Fund is using the cloud to transform IT provision</span>
<span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><a title="View user profile." href="https://diginomica.com/author/mark-samuels" class="username">Mark Samuels</a></span>
<span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden">Tue, 06/02/2020 - 03:35</span>
<span class="a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_46 addtoany_list" data-a2a-url="https://diginomica.com/how-pension-protection-fund-using-cloud-transform-it-provision" data-a2a-title="How the Pension Protection Fund is using the cloud to transform IT provision"><a class="a2a_button_twitter"></a><a class="a2a_button_facebook"></a><a class="a2a_button_linkedin"></a><a class="a2a_button_reddit"></a><a class="a2a_button_buffer"></a><a class="a2a_button_flipboard"></a></span>
<dl class="node__summary summary">
<dt class="summary__label">Summary: </dt> <dd class="summary__content">
By embracing on-demand technology, the organisation has supported remote-working during the COVID-19 crisis and is well-placed to deliver on its business aims going forward.<br />
</dd>
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<figcaption>(Image by Frantisek Krejci from Pixabay )</figcaption>
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<p dir="ltr">Simon Liste, chief information technology officer (CITO) at The Pension Protection Fund (PPF), is using the cloud to help his organisation cope with the new way of working required by social distancing - and he has advice for other CIOs who are looking to implement on-demand IT: focus on purpose and classify what's critical to the organisation.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Set up by the Pensions Act 2004, the PPF protects millions of people throughout the United Kingdom who belong to defined benefit pension schemes. If their employers go bust, and their pension schemes cannot afford to pay what they promised, the PPF pays compensation for their lost pensions.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Liste joined the PPF as director of IT and change in February 2018. He was promoted to his current role in December 2018. With the backing of chief executive Oliver Morley, Liste is now halfway through a 36-month strategy to transform the organisation's operational processes through the effective use of digital services and systems.</p>
<h2 dir="ltr">Moving to the cloud</h2>
<p dir="ltr">The PPF's IT was previously outsourced to a managed services provider, including all aspects of governance, security, architecture and service delivery. Liste says he has brought IT management back in-house and disaggregated the support model to spread provision across a series of suppliers, reducing the level of potential risk from being over-reliant on one firm.</p>
<p dir="ltr">As part of his re-evaluation of service provision, Liste made an associated decision to take a cloud-first approach to IT implementation. While he had already made some progress around introducing cloud services, Liste says the coronavirus pandemic has helped to intensify the pace of IT-led change:</p>
<blockquote><p dir="ltr">"We had the roadmap and the strategy and I think we've probably had to bring some of that forward. We've had to be diligent and we've used three governance checks around projects, architecture and security to make sure that we're adhering to our principles when it comes to the delivery of change. We've done a complete reprioritisation and review of our change portfolio, where we're maximising some of the services we provide and making working from home easier for people."</p>
</blockquote>
<p dir="ltr">Liste says the PPF already had an Azure presence and he has helped the rest of the business to make the most of that provision. Where possible, the organisation has expanded its use of cloud services, such as video-conferencing technology Zoom. Liste says the implementation of Zoom was completed after a thorough security evaluation - and the technology is helping to bring a socially distanced workforce closer together, at least virtually:</p>
<blockquote><p dir="ltr">In the media, Zoom is getting a bit of a pasting, but you've got to be pragmatic, classify the tools and be clear on the purpose. We're using Zoom a lot for team facilitation. We're very concerned about our people's mental-health situation, so we encourage virtual coffees and social meetings. Technology departments can be seen as blockers - we wanted to facilitate change.</p>
</blockquote>
<p dir="ltr">Liste says the PPF has also made use of key collaborative tools from Microsoft, such as Office 365 and Teams. While the PPF's strategy is far from pioneering, it is a significant break for an organisation that had only recently switched from outsourced to insourced IT management. Across all forms of cloud implementation, data protection remains absolutely critical:</p>
<blockquote><p dir="ltr">When it comes to our wider strategy, I wouldn't say that I'm ‘reinventing the wheel' because that's not the case, but Office 365 and Teams have always been on our roadmap. There's a few other cloud-based tools that we're using that I won't reference, but these have been added to allow secure and collaborative interactions.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2 dir="ltr">Making the most of external service provision</h2>
<p dir="ltr">Liste says all CIOs thinking of moving to on-demand IT should evaluate the appropriateness of what goes to the cloud and what doesn't. While some reticent executives would rather most information is kept on-premise in a data centre, Liste says CIOs will discover that the cloud is a lot more secure than the naysayers think - and there are a lot of options:</p>
<blockquote><p dir="ltr">Where we can move things to the cloud, it's going to be a combination - so that might include infrastructure as a service, public cloud service or the private cloud. We've had a private cloud for a while anyway because we've implemented VMware. We like the concepts of portability, high availability and resiliency that come with the cloud. We're looking at back-ups and disaster recovery as a service to really take advantage of the cloud as much as we can.</p>
</blockquote>
<p dir="ltr">Liste says other public sector CIOs looking to use on-demand IT should classify what's critical to their organisations in terms of technology, business requirements and potential financial costs. Understand the stack and the technical debt, and then focus on the challenges that the business faces. He says CIOs must work collaboratively with line-of-business departments, not as an external party - which has sometimes been the way for IT departments:</p>
<blockquote><p dir="ltr">Moving to the cloud on its own is just part of the transformation. Understanding the business means you can provide the service and solution that is cost-appropriate. Going to the cloud isn't about cost efficiencies, it's always about cost-appropriateness. Any technology we procure has to be financially intelligent and it has to deliver against our objectives as an organisation.</p>
</blockquote>
<p dir="ltr">Liste believes that he's in a privileged position as his role allows him to sit on the PPF executive committee. That elevated role means his IT procurement decisions receive buy-in from the top of the organisation. Looking back on the decisions he's made in the past 18 months, he believes embracing insourcing and the cloud has been a game-changing combination:</p>
<blockquote><p dir="ltr">I do think that you need to have some element of ownership internally, so that you actually own your business requirements. And the external partners you choose do need to compliment your internal culture, which means you might want your architecture partner to be much more agile and diverse in the way they approach things, or you might want an expert partner in security that goes heavy on governance and checks. I think that business engagement, and talking and communicating, is fundamentally critical to success.</p>
</blockquote>
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<span class="categories__label">Read more on: </span> <ul class="categories__list">
<li class="categories__item"><a href="https://diginomica.com/category/collaboration" hreflang="en">Collaboration sharing and digital productivity</a></li>
<li class="categories__item"><a href="https://diginomica.com/category/cloud-platforms" hreflang="en">Cloud platforms - infrastructure and architecture</a></li>
<li class="categories__item"><a href="https://diginomica.com/category/digital-enterprise/use-cases" hreflang="en">Use cases</a></li>
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Tue, 02 Jun 2020 10:35:45 +0000Mark Samuels22297 at https://diginomica.comRolling out ServiceNow at University of California, Berkeley - key learningshttps://diginomica.com/rolling-out-servicenow-university-california-berkeley-key-learnings
<span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Rolling out ServiceNow at University of California, Berkeley - key learnings</span>
<span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><a title="View user profile." href="https://diginomica.com/author/ddpreez" class="username">Derek du Preez</a></span>
<span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden">Fri, 05/29/2020 - 06:43</span>
<span class="a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_46 addtoany_list" data-a2a-url="https://diginomica.com/rolling-out-servicenow-university-california-berkeley-key-learnings" data-a2a-title="Rolling out ServiceNow at University of California, Berkeley - key learnings"><a class="a2a_button_twitter"></a><a class="a2a_button_facebook"></a><a class="a2a_button_linkedin"></a><a class="a2a_button_reddit"></a><a class="a2a_button_buffer"></a><a class="a2a_button_flipboard"></a></span>
<dl class="node__summary summary">
<dt class="summary__label">Summary: </dt> <dd class="summary__content">
UC Berkeley is one of the top research institutions in the world and has aligned the ServiceNow platform with its leadership objectives. <br />
</dd>
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<figcaption>(Image sourced via UC Berkeley )</figcaption>
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<p dir="ltr">The University of California, Berkeley is one of the world's leading higher education institutions, with over 30,000 undergraduates and 11,000 graduates carrying out pioneering research. However, education is not finite and even UC Berkeley learnt some things along the way when rolling out the ServiceNow platform for IT, HR and telecoms.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The university decided to align its rollout of ServiceNow - and more broadly service delivery - with its leadership's overarching strategic objectives.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Kellie Waters, scrum master and project manager at the University of California Berkeley, was speaking at ServiceNow's virtual Knowledge 2020 event detailing the project. Waters gives a thorough breakdown of how to approach such a project in higher education, as well as provides useful feedback on what she'd do differently a second time around.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><a href="https://knowledge.servicenow.com/?campid=25683&cid=ps:blogpostk20:diginomica:all:emea">Knowledge 2020</a> has dozens of use case videos to stream on demand and you can <a href="https://knowledge.servicenow.com/?campid=25683&cid=ps:blogpostk20:diginomica:all:emea">find the event here</a>. For all of diginomica's coverage of the event, take a look at our <a href="https://diginomica.com/virtual-event/knowledge-2020">dedicated resource hub here</a>.</p>
<p dir="ltr">UC Berkeley now has 600 business services and 10,500 non-business services on the ServiceNow platform, which is managed by 700 licenced ITIL agents and 250 HR agents. Waters</p>
<blockquote><p dir="ltr">When we started looking at planning into the future we wanted to align our roadmap with our larger organisational goals. Our Chancellor put out a strategic plan for campus a few years ago, in which she highlighted some of her key goals and priorities.</p>
<p dir="ltr">It is a huge public research institution, so that really plays a part in the way we support the university and the campus faculty and staff. Especially in the focus of research.</p>
<p dir="ltr">In addition, our central IT leadership also put out a strategic plan. They worked with the Chancellor and the Chancellor's plan to align the IT organisation's plan and priorities with those higher level goals. So we tried to stay aligned with both of these when we were looking at our roadmap with ServiceNow.</p>
</blockquote>
<p dir="ltr">These overarching strategic goals include becoming more customer focused, boosting customer satisfaction; adopting standard practices and reporting; the broad adoption of ITSM principles and standard processes across departments; establishing performance metrics to track; as well as continuous improvement. Waters said:</p>
<blockquote><p>Really [this is about] being able to have a product that is simple, easy to use for customers and easy to find what they need from an IT service. We wanted high customer satisfaction ratings overall. We wanted to align with IT priorities and efforts for those campus customers. In addition we wanted standardised practices and reporting.</p>
<p dir="ltr">So when you went somewhere and asked a question, you would get the same answer each time, rather than different processes depending on where you were on campus.</p>
<p dir="ltr">In addition, we wanted incremental and continual improvement. We knew that it was going to be a long process, so when building our roadmap we wanted to look at things we could do over time that really fed into the overall goals for our IT leadership and our campus as a whole. Looking at performance metrics and ways to improve service based on what we were seeing and also getting a lot of customer feedback and input.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2 dir="ltr">The project</h2>
<p dir="ltr">Waters explained that UC Berkeley started its implementation by standing up the ServiceNow Knowledge Base, which it did very much ‘out of the box'. It then stood up Incident Management, with the aim of doing so within six months - moving away from BMC FootPrints, which had several customised instances across campus.</p>
<p dir="ltr">From there, the University stood up Change Management, Change Board, Reporting, Homepages and Asset Management.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The focus then went to incremental improvements, particularly around user experience. Waters said:</p>
<blockquote><p>From the basic Knowledge Base we moved into Knowledge Management. The key with that was really making it more customer centric and being able to have customers have access to Knowledge, to Knowledge articles, to be able to answer their own questions quickly, without having to go through IT if they didn't have to.</p>
<p dir="ltr">We created a public facing Knowledge Base and this allowed it to be integrated in Google and searchable in Google. Customers are able to access KB articles without actually logging into ServiceNow. This was a huge improvement for customer experience.</p>
</blockquote>
<p dir="ltr">UC Berkeley has also rolled out internal Knowledge Bases to keep track of their processes and keep information and notes within the ServiceNow platform, about how to deal with different problems. Processes have also been streamlined for customers and become more repeatable. Surveys are now used to gain customer feedback and track performance.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Major Incident is now also in place, so that the service desks are able to look at problems happening across departments but manage it in a central place.</p>
<h2 dir="ltr">Advice</h2>
<p dir="ltr">Waters said that one of the key things UC Berkeley has done is adopt regular focus groups for different stakeholders that make use of the ServiceNow platform. She said:</p>
<blockquote><p dir="ltr">What is most valuable? You want to ask the people using the platform, ask your agents and your users. We have something called a technical user group and it's users from across 30 different departments at UC Berkeley. They come together monthly to talk about issues that have come up, best practices they're using and improvements that they'd like to see. It's really been beneficial to get people to use the platform more and work across teams.</p>
<p dir="ltr">In addition we do a larger meeting with department leaders bi-weekly, as well as directors in central IT. This really helps them to see the value of ServiceNow, as well as give their opinion and feedback on what they'd like to see down the road.</p>
</blockquote>
<p dir="ltr">The team also organises bi-weekly check-ins with the main service desk, which has a very high volume of users on the platform, which provide "valuable" feedback given their familiarity with the product. Lots of review and planning is also carried out with high volume customers.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Waters explained that all of this should tie into the leadership's top-level priorities. She said:</p>
<blockquote><p dir="ltr">Again, tying all of this into all of the planning for what your leadership wants to see. Stressing, what is it your overall leadership and campus groups' want? And at that higher level, what can you show them that would be valuable to them in ServiceNow?</p>
</blockquote>
<h2 dir="ltr">Learnings</h2>
<p dir="ltr">UC Berkeley has learned a lot from the project. However, two key points stand out to Waters - adopting ServiceNow out of the box and also investing in training. On the former, she said:</p>
<blockquote><p dir="ltr">For us, the key was to start small and out of the box. We were really forced into this because we had that six month mandate to stand up ServiceNow. It was a good thing because it made us launch into using the platform without too much being stuck in a planning stage, trying to make things perfect, and too much customisation. We were forced to just use it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p dir="ltr">And on the latter, she said that if UC Berkeley had its opportunity again it would invest more in training for users from day one. Waters added:</p>
<blockquote><p dir="ltr">The only thing we would change about that is to invest in more training. We were rolling out things like the initial Incident Management work and reporting - we did not invest enough in training for our users. That was really difficult because the platform wasn't being used to its full capability for people and they were dissatisfied with it initially - they just didn't understand and weren't familiar with it. We would have definitely invested more in training.</p>
<p dir="ltr">We also also recommend getting your users involved in planning. The things you're going to do, ask the people that are using your platform from day to day. What would they want to see? What would they want to see rolled out next? What would improve their experience overall?</p>
</blockquote>
</div>
<p class="field field--name-field-disclosure field--type-string-long field--label-inline">
<em>Disclosure - ServiceNow is a diginomica premier partner at time of writing. </em>
</p>
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<div class="field__label">Related to the virtual event</div>
<div class="field__item"><a href="https://diginomica.com/virtual-event/knowledge-2020" hreflang="en">Knowledge 2020</a></div>
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Fri, 29 May 2020 13:43:53 +0000Derek du Preez22289 at https://diginomica.comNorthumbrian Water Group CIO Nigel Watson on getting innovation to flow https://diginomica.com/northumbrian-water-group-cio-nigel-watson-getting-innovation-flow
<span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Northumbrian Water Group CIO Nigel Watson on getting innovation to flow </span>
<span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><a title="View user profile." href="https://diginomica.com/author/mark-chillingworth" class="username">Mark Chillingworth</a></span>
<span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden">Wed, 05/27/2020 - 02:20</span>
<span class="a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_46 addtoany_list" data-a2a-url="https://diginomica.com/northumbrian-water-group-cio-nigel-watson-getting-innovation-flow" data-a2a-title="Northumbrian Water Group CIO Nigel Watson on getting innovation to flow "><a class="a2a_button_twitter"></a><a class="a2a_button_facebook"></a><a class="a2a_button_linkedin"></a><a class="a2a_button_reddit"></a><a class="a2a_button_buffer"></a><a class="a2a_button_flipboard"></a></span>
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<dt class="summary__label">Summary: </dt> <dd class="summary__content">
CIO of one of the key UK water companies - Northumbrian Water Group - explains how to tap into new ideas<br />
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<p dir="ltr">CIO Nigel Watson is creating the most digital water company in the sector at Northumbrian Water Group (NWG). Part of Hong Kong listed CK Infrastructure Holdings, NWG is one of the 10 main water businesses in the UK.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Like all CIOs, Watson's reasons for a digital ambition is business centric, but a bigger picture is streaming towards the business headquartered near Durham - climate change.</p>
<blockquote><p dir="ltr">Dry summers and weather events like the Beast from the East, as well as slower creeping changes from climate change like algae blooms in December necessitate the need to be a digital water company. The more digital signals that we can capture and use will enable us to react and find the best way to adapt and change.</p>
</blockquote>
<p dir="ltr">Speaking from home due to the Coronavirus pandemic, Watson should have been in the throes of planning the fourth summer Innovation Festival, but the ever positive CIO has plans for an autumn event and told diginomica the importance and value of innovation events to bring fresh clean thinking into the organisation.</p>
<blockquote><p dir="ltr">In many ways we are a classic water business. In the North East we provide clean water and sewage services, in our Essex and Suffolk businesses we provide clean water only.</p>
<p dir="ltr">But we also do some other things, NWG creates energy from waste and puts that back into the National Grid and in Kielder we operate a holiday business. Once you get under the skin it is a fascinating business.</p>
</blockquote>
<p dir="ltr">All vertical markets are investigating digital methods. The hope is that digital methods enable organisations to change direction rapidly and Watson says rapid movements in business flow is vital for a water company.</p>
<h2 dir="ltr">Festival feeling</h2>
<p dir="ltr">Since 2015 NWG has had an open door event every year where suppliers, regulators and tech firms sit side by side with NWG and in effect hack ideas that can improve water quality, customer service, the environment and business operations. Those events became festivals from 2017 onwards when Watson became CIO, stepping up from his previous role as Programme Director. For 2020 NWG have completely moved the event to an on-line format.</p>
<blockquote><p dir="ltr">We were initially sad not to be able to build on the momentum we've got with our festival, but we think going on-line brings some great possibilities, so we're feeling very excited about what we can achieve".</p>
<p dir="ltr">People are at the centre of it, mixing people up is really important, so now we are looking at how we do that virtually so that we can keep the momentum, because there has been a great pipeline of ideas that have come from these events.</p>
</blockquote>
<p dir="ltr">That momentum has seen 81 active ideas currently in the pipeline. The progress of these ideas is reviewed by the Executive Leadership Team every month. Watson says the expectation is that three to four out of 10 ideas succeed, which the CIO says is down to a focus by NWG to see ideas through.</p>
<blockquote><p dir="ltr">This year we are looking to further strengthen the transition of the ideas into the business. You can get your sprints down to four days and then the fifth day is a handover to the business.</p>
<p dir="ltr">We will bring in all of the senior leadership team so they can pick an idea and take it back to their business units. We are often procuring in the tent at the festival and these can be to the value of up to £50,000.</p>
</blockquote>
<p dir="ltr">NWG has openly invited regulators to be a part of the festivals.</p>
<blockquote><p dir="ltr">Last year Ofwat spent a lot of time with us at the event and we are having active discussions with Ofgem for 2020. There is strong nexus between the water and energy sectors and both sectors are working to reduce poverty and the amount of carbon that goes into the atmosphere.</p>
</blockquote>
<p dir="ltr">Collaborating across industry sectors is important to Watson. In 2019 NWG untapped the demand for innovation in the water sector outside of the North East for the first time and partnered on a similar innovation festival, this time in East Anglia, where it operates two water companies. Innovate East is a partnership between the Essex and Suffolk Water company which is part of the NWG group and Anglian Water. Watson says critics of the sector claim water companies cannot work together and he believes Innovate East is a sign of a change in the industry.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Innovate East benefited all parties because it brought new external parties into the picture, broadening the innovation ecosystem of the sector.</p>
<h2 dir="ltr">Complex engineering</h2>
<p dir="ltr">Despite the digital ambitions of NWG and its CIO, there is no escaping that water utilities are large, complex organisations with a reliance on heavy engineering. As a result a water company cannot work at the pace of change as a pure digital business. But becoming a digital business is about a cultural approach and that flows through the business. Watson speaks passionately about the water sector and its' been his home for over five years, so he is well aware of the challenges of adding digital to utility engineering. The CIO goes on to describe how NWG, in partnership with BT, is working on smart meter methods as well as data capture across all parts of the organisation.</p>
<blockquote><p dir="ltr">Field experiments take a long time, it takes time to set up the infrastructure and you may find when you get on site there are birds nesting. If you are putting technology into the clean water system you are working in a very highly regulated environment. So that means it can take two to three years to see if an innovation was a success, because as a water company you need to go through a couple of winters and summers.</p>
</blockquote>
<p dir="ltr">Innovations in areas such as the Internet of Things (IoT) are taking place, NWG is pulling SCADA data from across the water network and flowing straight into the cloud with Microsoft Azure.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The focus is not just on newer technologies such as IoT, but improving existing business processes can move a business as far forward as a new technology. NWG was told to improve its customer service in September 2019 by the sector's watchdog following a rise in complaints.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Watson doesn't duck the issue and explains that in the last five year period (water companies work on five year commissions from the regulator) NWG went through a £80 million IT transformation programme, with the customer facing technologies being a key part of that transformation programme. A new CRM and Billing system was implemented, the first one for NWG in 24 years.</p>
<blockquote><p dir="ltr">Imagine that I moved you from Lotus Notes to Outlook 365, it would take you quite some time to adjust. That's what it was like for our Customer Service employees. It took time for them to learn the new system and that meant that our average handling time of a customer issue went up by 30%. Customers found it hard to get through during that time.</p>
</blockquote>
<p dir="ltr">Watson says that in a business with a high average tenure time for its staff, the scale of the change was more significant than he had planned for.</p>
<blockquote><p dir="ltr">The people who have only been with us for two to three years quickly got used to the new system, but for our longer term team members it took longer, but we are back to the normal level now.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2 dir="ltr">Data and technology lakes</h2>
<p dir="ltr">Despite the challenges of adapting to a new billing and CRM system, Watson says NWG has improved its customer data set and the organisation now has a data science team supporting both the customer facing teams, but also the engineers and operators in the below the ground and above the ground water resources.</p>
<blockquote><p dir="ltr">We have 10 data scientists and they are having a massive impact on the business. We have had some good success with our leakage and pollution targets as a result and we are at the top of the league tables for this. That is down to data and the people we have in those fields.</p>
</blockquote>
<p dir="ltr">As I saw a couple of years back when attending a NWG innovation event, they bring together major vendors and challenger technology businesses. As a result Watson has a mix of suppliers, with IBM, Microsoft and Oracle providing transformation, cloud and billing technology services respectively. Also in his pool are specialist data companies like Aiimi and Jumping Rivers, a start-up out of Newcastle University. They also work with local providers like Shout to develop Apps for employees and customers to deliver a great experience on top of the architecture that has been delivered in transformation.</p>
<blockquote><p dir="ltr">When you go into a big transformation it makes sense to work with a big partner, but I also see lots of opportunity to work with smaller businesses to find new insight.</p>
</blockquote>
<p dir="ltr">NWG has 190 people in IT and the CIO plans to reduce the number of contractors in use and Watson says the IT budget has been benchmarked and is average for the industry.</p>
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<li class="categories__item"><a href="https://diginomica.com/category/data-analytics-planning" hreflang="en">Analytics planning and data analysis</a></li>
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Wed, 27 May 2020 09:20:22 +0000Mark Chillingworth22270 at https://diginomica.comChevron rolls out ServiceNow for global IT operations in just 7 monthshttps://diginomica.com/chevron-rolls-out-servicenow-global-it-operations-just-7-months
<span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Chevron rolls out ServiceNow for global IT operations in just 7 months</span>
<span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><a title="View user profile." href="https://diginomica.com/author/ddpreez" class="username">Derek du Preez</a></span>
<span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden">Tue, 05/26/2020 - 08:49</span>
<span class="a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_46 addtoany_list" data-a2a-url="https://diginomica.com/chevron-rolls-out-servicenow-global-it-operations-just-7-months" data-a2a-title="Chevron rolls out ServiceNow for global IT operations in just 7 months"><a class="a2a_button_twitter"></a><a class="a2a_button_facebook"></a><a class="a2a_button_linkedin"></a><a class="a2a_button_reddit"></a><a class="a2a_button_buffer"></a><a class="a2a_button_flipboard"></a></span>
<dl class="node__summary summary">
<dt class="summary__label">Summary: </dt> <dd class="summary__content">
One of the world’s largest energy companies, Chevron, replaced BMC with ServiceNow for ITSM for thousands of users.
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<figcaption>(Image sourced via Chevron website)</figcaption>
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<p dir="ltr">Energy giant Chevron has simplified its IT service delivery for thousands of users across 45 different countries by rolling out ServiceNow in just 7 months, replacing a highly customised and fragmented implementation of BMC Remedy.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Mike Colvin, IT Operations Manager at Chevron, was speaking at ServiceNow's virtual Knowledge 2020 event, where he explained the importance of change management throughout the implementation and the benefits of putting the new product in front of users at an early stage.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Knowledge 2020 has dozens of end user sessions available on demand and can be <a href="https://knowledge.servicenow.com/?campid=25683&cid=ps:blogpostk20:diginomica:all:emea">accessed here</a>. For diginomica's coverage from the event, take a look at our <a href="https://diginomica.com/virtual-event/knowledge-2020">dedicated resource hub here</a>.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Colvin explained that back in 2019 Chevron had been using BMC's Remedy platform for approximately three and a half years, with 7,000 users. The system had managed 1.1 million incidents and there were approximately 180,000 assets in the CMDB. However, over time, the company had let people build their own entries in the service catalog and there were 1,200 disjointed forms that users were expected to just ‘find' when they had a problem to report.</p>
<p>Colvin said:</p>
<blockquote><p dir="ltr">This wasn't a friendly end user view. This was a view of technology people and not in an organised fashion. We also had 63 different interfaces and integrations, so a lot of complexity of data going in and out. It fundamentally wasn't a modern platform that allows API integration with easy access to data. So we had a workforce that didn't really want to use the system.</p>
</blockquote>
<p dir="ltr">It was lifecycle time for Chevron and the BMC platform in 2018 and the company took time to reassess what it should do. It did this by asking itself two key questions:</p>
<ol>
<li dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr">Is ITSM still relevant?</p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr">Is ITSM differentiating to Chevron?</p>
</li>
</ol>
<p dir="ltr">The conclusion was that ITSM still plays a significant role in knowing which assets and services are being managed, knowing when things break, as well as being key to understanding what problems employees are experiencing. However, Colvin and his team also established that ITSM should be a common platform for the whole of Chevron, with a simple configuration, so that data on asset services can be made available to other sources via API enablement.</p>
<p dir="ltr">At the time, Chevron assessed both BMC again and ServiceNow. ServiceNow won out for a number of reasons, being guided by the questions above. Colvin said:</p>
<blockquote><p dir="ltr">If we want to stop taking a technologist view and take an end user view coming into our service catalogue, our vision is to make all corporate services available by a couple of clicks. In the past users had a long series of bookmarks on their browser to remember where to go to find anything. Then if you went to IT, we had 1,200 things in this catalogue. Our vision is going to be about finding the services they need quickly and when they come to IT, can it be in an orchestrated fashion that's built for the end user?</p>
<p dir="ltr">We evaluated on total cost of ownership, but looking at ServiceNow we also saw a bigger case for value. The other criteria we had was sentiment - BMC took a long time to come to user interface and in the meantime our workforce lost interest in using Remedy.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2 dir="ltr">The project</h2>
<p dir="ltr">Colvin outlined how Chevron faced a number of challenges. Firstly, front of mind for him was that Chevron is an energy company and IT should be there just to support energy operations. In other words, why can't Chevron just use industry best practice and implement the software the way that it is meant to be used?</p>
<p dir="ltr">Complementing this, Chevron wanted to ensure that the system was user friendly and that they migrated to a platform that is intuitive. Colvin explained the benefit of common processes, running on a single instance:</p>
<blockquote><p dir="ltr">Currently on ServiceNow we do cloud provisioning, all of our HR service management, our facilities group is coming onto ServiceNow, and our ITSM is on the platform. It is all running on a single production instance - we believe the value and the efficiency is there in running and managing a single production instance. All the master data about people, location and cost centres is all managed in the platform. And all of these foundational and functional areas are able to to leverage and use it.</p>
<p dir="ltr">We did an upgrade a week ago and just coordinated and all groups went to Orlando [a ServiceNow release] at the same time. One upgrade. That's some of the value and efficiency we see by doing it. It does take some governance, which we are learning.</p>
</blockquote>
<p dir="ltr">This project began in May 2019 and Colvin set the goal of doing the implementation in just seven months. He said that this was an ambitious timeframe given that there was a steep learning curve, he had to get teams up and running, and the company had a complex legacy catalogue.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Chevron worked with KPMG on the project and assigned a KPMG individual and a Chevron individual to each function - e.g. platform/integrations, change and release, service catalog, data warehouse. Colvin said:</p>
<blockquote><p>They were to work together, joined at the hip, to drive the stories and the delivery for their functional area. I had a governance body set up as well that included senior management from across Chevron, which allowed us to test the big decisions - such as, are we copying all the legacy incident data into ServiceNow or leaving it in a data warehouse? [Using feedback from the governance body] we decided not to copy all the data.</p>
</blockquote>
<p dir="ltr">Colvin said that the following points were key to the project's success:</p>
<ul>
<li dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr">Design with an end user experience in mind.</p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr">Make it intuitive and follow a ‘why won't this work for you?' approach.</p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr">Minimise approval steps.</p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr">Leverage out of the box data fields and value where possible. Use</p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr">ServiceNow as ServiceNow was designed to be used. No customisation.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2 dir="ltr">Learnings</h2>
<p dir="ltr">Chevron was able to reduce the number of integrations compared to the BMC platform by 30% and was able to achieve its 7 month goal by going live on December 1st 2019.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Colvin believes that two key factors were important in achieving this - change champions and early demos for users. He said:</p>
<blockquote><p dir="ltr">It's great to build a product, but you've got to get people to use it. We initiated a change champion network at work, where we had representatives from every major IT group across Chevron. We used them as the conduit to pass information to that business unit and also to receive feedback. They helped us to shape some of the outcomes of the product that we delivered.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><p>We started showing them the system in July. We had barely started configuration in June and in month two we were already starting to show the product. It wasn't finished or polished, but it allowed us to start allaying concerns - anxiety went down when they could see what it might become and it allowed us to get some feedback on the decisions we were making. We ended up with a higher quality product, we believe.</p>
</blockquote>
<p dir="ltr">Colvin said that his number one key learning is to "communicate, communicate, communicate", which is why the above points were so important to the project.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The other key bit of advice Colvin would give to other companies undertaking a similar project is to start work early on the Service Catalog - and to keep an ‘Amazon mindset'. He explained:</p>
<blockquote><p>On the Service Catalog, we did start that a little bit late. We knew we had a lot to transform, but the design work around the Catalog needs to start early. It became a critical path for us at the end. The Catalog is hard and it's hard not getting technologists to not speak in technical terms.</p>
<p dir="ltr">One of the things that I told them is that ‘Amazon.com is out there, nobody trained me how to use it and boxes show up at my door'. Why can't I come to Chevron and have a catalog that no one has trained me how to use? I can find what I need and it shows up on my computer. That's our aspirational goal and we have made significant steps towards that. But with our technical people that takes some coaching and mentoring to get there.</p>
</blockquote>
<p dir="ltr">ServiceNow is now live at Chevron with 6 ITSM processes, enabling global IT operations across 45 countries and 27 business units. The deployment touches 86,000 end users and 5,600 make use of the platform as a core component of their job.</p>
</div>
<p class="field field--name-field-disclosure field--type-string-long field--label-inline">
<em>Disclosure - ServiceNow is a diginomica premier partner at time of writing.</em>
</p>
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<div class="field__item"><a href="https://diginomica.com/virtual-event/knowledge-2020" hreflang="en">Knowledge 2020</a></div>
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Tue, 26 May 2020 15:49:52 +0000Derek du Preez22268 at https://diginomica.comPlanful Virtual Tour 2020 - Bose reveals lessons learned on the way to continuous planninghttps://diginomica.com/planful-virtual-tour-2020-bose-reveals-lessons-learned-way-continuous-planning
<span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Planful Virtual Tour 2020 - Bose reveals lessons learned on the way to continuous planning</span>
<span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><a title="View user profile." href="https://diginomica.com/author/jreed" class="username">Jon Reed</a></span>
<span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden">Thu, 05/21/2020 - 22:25</span>
<span class="a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_46 addtoany_list" data-a2a-url="https://diginomica.com/planful-virtual-tour-2020-bose-reveals-lessons-learned-way-continuous-planning" data-a2a-title="Planful Virtual Tour 2020 - Bose reveals lessons learned on the way to continuous planning"><a class="a2a_button_twitter"></a><a class="a2a_button_facebook"></a><a class="a2a_button_linkedin"></a><a class="a2a_button_reddit"></a><a class="a2a_button_buffer"></a><a class="a2a_button_flipboard"></a></span>
<dl class="node__summary summary">
<dt class="summary__label">Summary: </dt> <dd class="summary__content">
On the last day of Planful's Virtual Tour, I searched for proof points on continuous planning in the real world. A standout customer presentation from Bose showed what's needed in today's disrupted markets.
</dd>
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<figcaption>(via Planful)</figcaption>
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<p>I checked out the Planful Virtual Tour with a few burning questions in mind. Last week, I looked at how The Boston Red Sox are <a href="https://diginomica.com/planful-virtual-tour-2020-how-boston-red-sox-finance-team-uses-modern-planning-tools-rethink">using FP&A to respond to a disrupted market</a>.</p>
<p>Another top question: how are customers faring in pursuit of continuous planning? As I wrote:</p>
<blockquote><p>In truth, continuous planning is a continuum, not an end state. For some companies, just getting to a monthly planning cycle is a huge step forward. Then you push further.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yes, but that's not enough, is it? The COVID-19 response is forcing the issue. The Red Sox story was about running multiple scenarios, quickly categorizing all expenses into essential and non-essential, and other urgent projects that make quarterly planning cycles suddenly obsolete.</p>
<h2>Bose on planning - don't bombard your system with data</h2>
<p>Luis Martinez Luna, Sr. Financial & Business Analyst at <a href="https://www.bose.com/en_us/index.html">Bose</a>, shared how they transitioned from annual to quarterly planning, with a potential push to <a href="https://planful.com/platform/dynamic-planning/">Dynamic Planning</a> still ahead. Luna addressed the business impact of the COVID-19 crisis, which has Bose has faced head-on, both in retail and workforce management. </p>
<p>Learning about Bose's COVID-19 response, what really struck me was: you need a core of financial planning principles that can serve you in any economy. As Luna told us:</p>
<blockquote><p>Without a clear vision, you're going to end up going in circles. You don't know where you're going; you don't have a destination.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Luna says a clear vision doesn't necessarily mean you can become a continuous planner out of the gate. But it means you'll know the right next step. He shared key "pillars" of Bose's FP&A strategy. Here is my take on those, with his quotes:</p>
<p><strong>1. A data-driven approach to planning doesn't mean you bombard your system with data. </strong>Luna:</p>
<blockquote><p>We're focusing on not throwing the kitchen sink of data into [Planful] necessarily, but really taking the time to figure out what are those key levers that impact our business both positively and negatively, and making sure that we don't bring in anything that's just going to be noise.</p>
<p>We want to make sure the data is accurate, and that it's been scrubbed. And that it's just quality information that we're bringing into our planning process.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><strong>2. If you're data-driven, you must also have agile and relevant processes for each business unit, or those insights aren't relevant.</strong></p>
<blockquote><p>We want to make sure the [planning] tool is dynamic enough and flexible in our processes as well, so that we don't have a one-size-fits-all for a business. We know that there's different drivers among the different business units that we have with Bose, whether that's our automotive unit, which is drastically different from our consumer electronics or health business. And so we wanted to make sure that the agility and efficiency applied across the board.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><strong>3. Being relevant to business units isn't just about data - it's about collaboration.</strong> Finance can't deliver relevance without stepping into a collaborative way of working.</p>
<blockquote><p>We want to make sure that there's operational accountability, there's a connectedness across the business to the planning process. Again, this is not just something finance does, but something that becomes core to our day-to-day processes. There needs to be transparency. So where is the single location - the single source of truth as wel - where all the key business stakeholders can go to, and make sure that we're all playing off the same sheet of music.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Continuous planning fundamentals - no unruly spreadsheets allowed</h2>
<p>Then Luna added: "And it needs to be dynamic, right?" And that's where Bose's push towards continuous planning comes in. Luna made the continuous planning case: unruly spreadsheets and annual budgets aren't getting it done.</p>
<blockquote><p>We live in a very dynamic world. Especially in times like this, we need to continually plan. If we think about a traditional budgeting process, it quickly become outdated.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The other shift with continuous planning - moving out of a finance-only approach.</p>
<blockquote><p>We need this to be integrated. And so again, this needs to be part of the day-to-day planning and business operations. Whether that's a divisional quarterly business review that happens, or there is some real estate planning that needs to happen. We need to have all of that connected to our planning process. It goes beyond the finance-only approach to planning.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Luna walked us through their chronology, with milestones as the Bose finance team moved into more agile ways of working. Here's a few:</p>
<p><strong>Q1 2017 - Bose goes live on Planful</strong>, and completes their first budget on Planful. "<em>Not a true game changer</em>," says Luna, "<em>But a step in the right direction</em>." Luna's team still ran their three month budget on Planful, but they gained on consolidation efficiencies: "<em>There's less room for error when you're having to consolidate versus adding up cells in Excel</em>."</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Bose extended the time horizon for planning - "<em>because the world doesn't end when your fiscal year ends,</em>" quipped Luna. They moved to a five quarter rolling forecast, and now forecast two years out.</p>
<p><strong>January 2018 - Bose moves to eliminate the static budget process</strong> (some optional budgeting processes were allowed during the transition). Luna anticipated my question: why did you allow for those exceptions? "<em>It's not a sprint, it's a marathon. Some of the change management is really the hardest piece of this. We want to be flexible</em>."</p>
<p>Luna also shared Bose's line-of-business planning projects. All projects come back to the same "pillars" he advocates. Example: working with Planful's Workforce Planning requires a deeper collaboration between finance and HR. Luna:</p>
<blockquote><p>I don't have to go and dig up any sort of Excel file to know what we assumed in terms of resourcing. If I want to see the last plan, I can just go into the tool. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Within Planful, managers can make a note of top performers at the individual employee level.</p>
<blockquote><p>It's a dynamic, super flexible tool... As we get feedback from a user base, every single scenario can be really configured from the ground up. So it really is a flexible module within within the platform. And it's just easy to change assumptions.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And in today's high stakes staffing requirements, you've got to get workplace planning right. Luna:</p>
<blockquote><p>If we think about the climate that we're in now, where we are as Bose, we're in a really consumer focused industry. And so the reality for us, like many of you that are listening, is we have to consider things like furloughing employees, terminations, reductions in size, re-opening - all in response to the economic impact of COVID-19.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>My take</h2>
<p>Continuous planning is not a flip-the-switch cure all. It's a vision you work towards, with a core set of planning principles that never waver, with realistic milestones along the way. The Bose story bears that out.</p>
<p>Alongside that, I have no problem with Planful emphasizing a set of quickly impactful use cases under the <a href="https://planful.com/now/">Planful Now monicker</a>. If you can get use cases like Workforce Planning out the door, then finance teams will be perceived as relevant to the situation we now face. That's way better than being viewed as obsessive bean counters who make cuts without grasping context.</p>
<p>It's very tough to pull off so-called continuous planning while juggling spreadsheets - so modern planning tools are important. But as I wrote in my kickoff piece:</p>
<blockquote><p>Modern tools are only part of that winning equation. Culture and process change remain the sticking points.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Halloran hits on that in his latest diginomica piece, <a href="https://diginomica.com/build-continuous-planning-culture-business">Creating a continuous planning culture</a>. I've got more questions on how customers can modernize planning amidst turmoil, especially when they face organizational resistance as well. But Planful's Virtual Tour got a few of my pesky questions answered. That's not something I can say about all the virtual events I've attended this spring.</p>
</div>
<p class="field field--name-field-image-credit field--type-string field--label-inline">
<em>Image credit - Screen capture of Bose's Luis Martinez Luna presenting at Planful Virtual Tour 2020, via Planful.com</em>
</p>
<p class="field field--name-field-disclosure field--type-string-long field--label-inline">
<em>Disclosure - Planful is a diginomica premier partner.</em>
</p>
<div class="field field--name-field-category node__categories categories">
<span class="categories__label">Read more on: </span> <ul class="categories__list">
<li class="categories__item"><a href="https://diginomica.com/category/data-analytics-planning" hreflang="en">Analytics planning and data analysis</a></li>
<li class="categories__item"><a href="https://diginomica.com/category/digital-enterprise" hreflang="en">Digital enterprise in the real world</a></li>
<li class="categories__item"><a href="https://diginomica.com/category/digital-enterprise/use-cases" hreflang="en">Use cases</a></li>
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Fri, 22 May 2020 05:25:21 +0000Jon Reed22256 at https://diginomica.comSecuring the provision of antibodies - an interview with Abcam CSO Helen Rabehttps://diginomica.com/securing-provision-antibodies-interview-abcam-cso-helen-rabe
<span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Securing the provision of antibodies - an interview with Abcam CSO Helen Rabe</span>
<span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><a title="View user profile." href="https://diginomica.com/author/sooraj-shah" class="username">Sooraj Shah</a></span>
<span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden">Fri, 05/22/2020 - 03:40</span>
<span class="a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_46 addtoany_list" data-a2a-url="https://diginomica.com/securing-provision-antibodies-interview-abcam-cso-helen-rabe" data-a2a-title="Securing the provision of antibodies - an interview with Abcam CSO Helen Rabe"><a class="a2a_button_twitter"></a><a class="a2a_button_facebook"></a><a class="a2a_button_linkedin"></a><a class="a2a_button_reddit"></a><a class="a2a_button_buffer"></a><a class="a2a_button_flipboard"></a></span>
<dl class="node__summary summary">
<dt class="summary__label">Summary: </dt> <dd class="summary__content">
Helen Rabe has unique security challenges compared to her peers, because of the nature and size of the Abcam business<br />
</dd>
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<img alt="Image of some Abcam antibodies" src="https://diginomica.com/sites/default/files/styles/article_images_desktop/public/images/2020-05/Screenshot%202020-05-22%20at%2011.46.49.png?itok=zD9ZgA09" />
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<figcaption>(Image sourced via Abcam website)</figcaption>
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<p dir="ltr">More than two decades ago, Jonathan Miller, a scientist at the University of Cambridge, had numerous issues with his antibodies: a lack of quality and supporting data were two of his biggest problems, and as a result, his research took a lot longer. So he decided to build a company that would work on exactly that; providing the antibodies accompanied by comprehensive and open data. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Since then, the company has grown from start-up, to unicorn; the multi-billion dollar organisation ships orders to over 140 countries from a range of more than 100,000 products. It has offices in the UK, the US, China and Japan, with almost of a fifth of its 1400 staff being PhD-level graduates. </p>
<p dir="ltr">With so much media attention on anything Coronavirus-related, Abcam is perhaps one of the companies that has gone under the radar, but as it provides antibodies and antibody-related products including protein detection products, the company forms part of a global effort for scientists to better understand COVID-19. </p>
<p dir="ltr">In fact, as the company's chief security officer (CSO) Helen Rabe explained, unlike many other CSOs and CISOs who have had to contend with security challenges with remote working, Abcam already had a flexible work policy in place, so it was in a strong position to manage that when lockdown came into effect. Instead, Rabe has been busy with challenges that are unique to Abcam.</p>
<p dir="ltr">She said:</p>
<blockquote><p dir="ltr">What we have been doing is providing avenues to access our intellectual property- we've been providing a number of researchers access to pockets of that data, and we've been supporting them on solutions in line with that initiative. We've had to move very quickly.</p>
</blockquote>
<p dir="ltr"> The approach taken was in line with the ‘people, processes and technology' mantra. From a people perspective, the security team needed to know which researchers the scientists were engaging with regards to accessing the data, from a technology point of view, Rabe and her team had to establish where the data was stored, and from a process standpoint, they had to understand how the company could get these data to these researchers and scientists in a secure manner. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Rabe's team had to ensure that this data was locked down to only that group of individuals, and work with its scientists to ensure that they would be equipped to play their part in securing the data and transferring it to make it available to researchers. </p>
<h2 dir="ltr">Security is a personal concern now</h2>
<p dir="ltr">Another challenge that Rabe and her team have had to contend with is the number of security questions from employees around the use of certain tools in their personal lives, including Zoom.</p>
<p dir="ltr">She said:</p>
<blockquote><p dir="ltr">When there are security concerns, my end users reach out to me or my team directly to ask questions through a dedicated chat facility. You're supporting your end users' personal lives as well as they're using Zoom to call family and there's been a rise in other online scams too.</p>
<p dir="ltr">There really is no difference at this point in time between personal and professional lives when it comes to the current security climate. Two months ago, the end user engagement was around one or two queries a day, and since we have been working remotely it has gone up exponentially, with people being far more aware of the security challenges that are out there for them.</p>
</blockquote>
<p dir="ltr">As a result, the team has been engaging on activities to help end users in their personal lives. For example, it has a Friday session where the team will introduce them to a topic - such as background information on different types of hackers. </p>
<p dir="ltr">To help to keep users alert to the threats they're facing, Rabe's team decided to release cyber awareness videos on a weekly, rather than monthly basis, when lockdown went into effect. </p>
<p dir="ltr">She said: </p>
<blockquote><p dir="ltr">The challenge is around keeping the noise from our end user population down from a concern standpoint but also ensuring they're still proactively engaged with our ongoing security awareness programme.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2 dir="ltr">Not spending for the sake of it</h2>
<p dir="ltr">While CISOs often have to exploit certain situations such as GDPR in order to get much-needed budget increases, Rabe says that this kind of tactic does not sit well with her, especially at an organisation that already has a good foundation of technology in place.</p>
<p dir="ltr">She said:</p>
<blockquote><p dir="ltr">I'm not changing my requirements because I don't need to - I have what I need for now, and I won't purchase until I need to.</p>
</blockquote>
<p dir="ltr">Rabe says before purchasing further technology, she works to ensure that existing tools are being used to their full capabilities, and that partners' capabilities are also being leveraged as much as possible. In her experience, if the issue remains after taking these actions, then she would go to the CIO and the board to ask for the money to invest in a new product or service. By taking this approach, Rabe believes that the CIO-CSO dynamic becomes one based on trust, as the CIO will take the request more seriously.</p>
<h2 dir="ltr">A change in mindset</h2>
<p dir="ltr">Previously Rabe wanted the mindset of her leadership teams to be that they would not hear from her or her team because they would be doing their jobs well, and keeping things secure. However, she says that the current climate has meant this should be reconsidered.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Rabe said:</p>
<blockquote><p dir="ltr">Now, everybody understands because of the amount of media, security in general is under the microscope and under a lot of pressure. So provision of basic metrics around things like how many phishing attacks have been attempted and how many of users have been impacted can provide reassurance. </p>
<p dir="ltr">This means even if they don't hear from me, they can see what we're dealing with in the background - that gives them that reassurance and keeps the nervousness down, and helps them to understand that lack of engagement is not because If the CISO and security team are keeping everything operating. The team may be invisible but they are still effective.</p>
</blockquote>
</div>
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<div class="field__item"><a href="https://diginomica.com/tags/coronavirus" hreflang="en">Coronavirus</a></div>
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<span class="categories__label">Read more on: </span> <ul class="categories__list">
<li class="categories__item"><a href="https://diginomica.com/category/governance/security" hreflang="en">Security</a></li>
<li class="categories__item"><a href="https://diginomica.com/category/digital-enterprise/use-cases" hreflang="en">Use cases</a></li>
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Fri, 22 May 2020 10:40:00 +0000Sooraj Shah22258 at https://diginomica.comNordic bank DNB ASA centralises IT data with ServiceNow to reduce risk and boost compliance https://diginomica.com/nordic-bank-dnb-asa-centralises-it-data-servicenow-reduce-risk-and-boost-compliance
<span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Nordic bank DNB ASA centralises IT data with ServiceNow to reduce risk and boost compliance </span>
<span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><a title="View user profile." href="https://diginomica.com/author/ddpreez" class="username">Derek du Preez</a></span>
<span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden">Thu, 05/21/2020 - 06:17</span>
<span class="a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_46 addtoany_list" data-a2a-url="https://diginomica.com/nordic-bank-dnb-asa-centralises-it-data-servicenow-reduce-risk-and-boost-compliance" data-a2a-title="Nordic bank DNB ASA centralises IT data with ServiceNow to reduce risk and boost compliance "><a class="a2a_button_twitter"></a><a class="a2a_button_facebook"></a><a class="a2a_button_linkedin"></a><a class="a2a_button_reddit"></a><a class="a2a_button_buffer"></a><a class="a2a_button_flipboard"></a></span>
<dl class="node__summary summary">
<dt class="summary__label">Summary: </dt> <dd class="summary__content">
DNB ASA hopes that the use of ServiceNow across IT will result in better credit and risk scores, meaning it has to keep less in financial reserves. <br />
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<img alt="Image of city landscapes from DNB ASA" src="https://diginomica.com/sites/default/files/styles/article_images_desktop/public/images/2020-05/E9AB0FC2-6422-43A4-AA41-D894AB7C5779.jpeg?itok=FoHOsZ8S" />
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</div>
<figcaption>(Image sourced via DNB ASA website)</figcaption>
</figure>
<p dir="ltr"><a href="https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=2ahUKEwj2qKz1hcXpAhWUSsAKHRaRCJIQFjAAegQIAhAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dnb.no%2Fen%2Fcorporate-and-institutions&usg=AOvVaw1O70aREhZPyhMFj-06y8zZ">DNB ASA</a> is the largest financial institution in the Nordic region, with combined assets of more than NOK 1.9 trillion (USD$190 billion). The bank prides itself on its digital capabilities - where, for example, if you are a Norwegian citizen and apply for a loan, the whole process is digital, automated and can be approved in minutes.</p>
<p>However, this level of digital maturity, combined with the need for banks to bolster their risk and compliance regimes post-2008, means that DNB ASA needs to have stringent IT governance structures in place. With approximately €500 million IT costs every year, 1,200 IT internal staff, as well as up to 1,000 external IT consultants, you can imagine this isn't a simple task.</p>
<p dir="ltr">To tackle this and reduce its IT risk exposure, DNB ASA is standardising on ServiceNow as its CMDB, using modules out of the box wherever possible - allowing it to gain better insight into its systems and process, whilst reducing manual intervention and an over-reliance on spreadsheets.</p>
<p dir="ltr">We got the chance to speak to Anne Kristine Næss, enterprise architect at DNB ASA, about the bank's continuing shift to ServiceNow and the impact its having on the organisation's risk profile.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Our conversation forms part of ServiceNow's virtual event Knowledge 2020, <a href="https://knowledge.servicenow.com/?campid=25683&cid=ps:blogpostk20:diginomica:all:emea">which you can access here</a>. To check out all of diginomica's coverage from Knowledge 2020, you can access our <a href="https://diginomica.com/virtual-event/knowledge-2020">dedicated resource hub here</a>.</p>
<p>Næss explained how she was brought on board at the beginning of last year to build on the bank's implementation of ServiceNow, which started in 2017. The initial use case was to use the Now platform to boost system monitoring and reduce downtime of applications. She said:</p>
<blockquote><p dir="ltr">We've bought almost all the modules from ServiceNow, apart from the HR module. The important reason for doing so is to have a unified database. There's so much data that we share across so many people, and there's such enormous amounts of money at risk for just the IT dimension of this. And if we are to have separate tools for the governance processes, that would increase our complexity to such a degree that I'm not sure we could keep on delivering economically efficient services anymore.</p>
<p dir="ltr">We also have all these internal and external audits, because of all the laws and regulations for this, so we have to provide lots of reports and materials all the time, stating that we have things in order.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I joined in 2017 because DNB had important customer facing services that were down for long periods of time, which happened several times every month. The first part was to get on board change, process, as well as incident, problem and monitoring.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Once we had done this, the fact that we needed the complete database was the next big issue. So we also bought discovery, so that we could automate the building of the CMDB.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2 dir="ltr">Data is the key</h2>
<p dir="ltr">DNB ASA is now using ServiceNow to execute on areas such as software asset management, as well as managing IT financials. On the former, Næss explained that given the size of DNB's IT estate, licensing can cause a huge amount of extra cost for the bank. Using ServiceNow it is able to track how many active users it has, monitor licensing, as well as do vulnerability scans across all of its equipment. This is helping to reduce the burden and cost of manual administration, but also, again, reduce the risk for the organisation.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The key part of this, though, is getting away from the use of Excel spreadsheets and having a centralised data model for IT. Næss explained:</p>
<blockquote><p dir="ltr">Previous vendors relied a lot on Excel. But part of doing the transition was to make sure that the Excel information was transferred to our CMDB. And also that the teams were using the monitoring tools to test the data. Data is the most important factor. What we are seeing now with the risk process is that we use the same data there. We have risk profiles added to our business applications in the bank and we also relate the risks to the organisation dimensions - all the system users, all the department structures are present in ServiceNow.</p>
<p dir="ltr">All of this is a major business case for us, both in terms of security and economically.</p>
</blockquote>
<p dir="ltr">Whilst using ServiceNow as the bank's CMDB for IT, Næss said that wherever possible she is encouraging the use of modules as they come - out of the box. She provided an example of a previous IT financials project which hadn't followed this guidance and as a result was missing out on new functionality. Næss said:</p>
<blockquote><p dir="ltr">One of my major responsibilities is to make sure that we have tried out of the box first before we do any kind of tweaking. The project I'm spending the most time on right now is IT financials. The previous project ended up creating a lot of stuff on their own, which is sad because if they had spent the time correctly we would have come so much further and could have used so much of the good, new things coming from the latest ServiceNow releases.</p>
<p dir="ltr">We are a team of architects making sure we are the watchdogs for all the other projects and implementation teams, to make sure that the out of the box version is the best practice set up.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2 dir="ltr">Benefits</h2>
<p dir="ltr">Næss said that the benefits of using ServiceNow across IT have been "huge". And given the benefits that have been realised already, DNB ASA is considering extending the use of the platform outside of IT across the group to broaden the management of risk.</p>
<p dir="ltr">DNB ASA is also hoping that this superior approach to risk management, which doesn't rely on Excel, means that the bank can reduce the reserves it is legally required to hold in case things go wrong - by boosting its credit and risk scores. Næss said:</p>
<blockquote><p dir="ltr">The cost of downtime on customer facing solutions is not easy to count, but we might have lost fewer customers...to put it that way. We also have reduced the staffing on the change management team, because the process is easier to handle on ServiceNow. Also, for the risk processes and the governance processes that have been using manual labour from Excel spreadsheets. We have had lots of expensive external consultants from Accenture and such to cover these areas, so we have been able to cut down the costs of that.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Also, based on our credit score and our risk score with some external auditors, we have to retain a certain amount yearly. That's some percent of our yearly revenue we have to store in case we have a catastrophe - that money could be spent much more wisely. Now that we have better processes in place, it makes it possible to gain a higher score on that scale and reduce the amount of money we have to set aside for bad days.</p>
</blockquote>
</div>
<p class="field field--name-field-disclosure field--type-string-long field--label-inline">
<em>Disclosure - ServiceNow is a diginomica premier partner at time of writing. </em>
</p>
<div class="field field--name-field-category node__categories categories">
<span class="categories__label">Read more on: </span> <ul class="categories__list">
<li class="categories__item"><a href="https://diginomica.com/category/governance/security" hreflang="en">Security</a></li>
<li class="categories__item"><a href="https://diginomica.com/category/financial-services" hreflang="en">Financial services and fintech</a></li>
<li class="categories__item"><a href="https://diginomica.com/category/digital-enterprise/use-cases" hreflang="en">Use cases</a></li>
<li class="categories__item"><a href="https://diginomica.com/category/it-as-a-service/it-service-management" hreflang="en">IT service management</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="field field--name-field-virtual-event field--type-entity-reference field--label-inline">
<div class="field__label">Related to the virtual event</div>
<div class="field__item"><a href="https://diginomica.com/virtual-event/knowledge-2020" hreflang="en">Knowledge 2020</a></div>
</div>
Thu, 21 May 2020 13:17:31 +0000Derek du Preez22254 at https://diginomica.comPlanful Virtual Tour 2020 - how the Boston Red Sox finance team uses modern planning tools to rethink a disrupted markethttps://diginomica.com/planful-virtual-tour-2020-how-boston-red-sox-finance-team-uses-modern-planning-tools-rethink
<span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Planful Virtual Tour 2020 - how the Boston Red Sox finance team uses modern planning tools to rethink a disrupted market</span>
<span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><a title="View user profile." href="https://diginomica.com/author/jreed" class="username">Jon Reed</a></span>
<span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden">Wed, 05/20/2020 - 19:36</span>
<span class="a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_46 addtoany_list" data-a2a-url="https://diginomica.com/planful-virtual-tour-2020-how-boston-red-sox-finance-team-uses-modern-planning-tools-rethink" data-a2a-title="Planful Virtual Tour 2020 - how the Boston Red Sox finance team uses modern planning tools to rethink a disrupted market"><a class="a2a_button_twitter"></a><a class="a2a_button_facebook"></a><a class="a2a_button_linkedin"></a><a class="a2a_button_reddit"></a><a class="a2a_button_buffer"></a><a class="a2a_button_flipboard"></a></span>
<dl class="node__summary summary">
<dt class="summary__label">Summary: </dt> <dd class="summary__content">
Planful's Virtual Tour is underway. One standout so far: an unflinching story from the Boston Red Sox - and how their finance team is responding. Planning amidst uncertainty? Here's the questions they are tackling.
</dd>
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<figcaption>(via Planful)</figcaption>
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<p>To kick off Planful's ongoing Virtual Tour, I looked at how finance teams have been disrupted: <a href="https://diginomica.com/finance-leaders-had-toss-their-pre-covid-19-plans-so-whats-next-continuous-planning-says-planfuls">Finance leaders had to toss their pre-COVID-19 plans, so what's next? Continuous planning, says Planful's CEO</a>.</p>
<p>As the Planful sessions launched, I stuck into the customer presentations. My goals:</p>
<ul>
<li>Document the push to modern financial planning tools - and how to get it done.</li>
<li>Learn more about Planful Now, a new set of tools/methods to get impactful use cases live quickly.</li>
<li>Hear from finance leaders on the critical questions they are asking now.</li>
</ul>
<p>The <a href="https://www.mlb.com/redsox">Boston Red Sox</a> are my local baseball team. I know the types of scenarios sports teams are running, and how crucial those answers are (example: what are the different revenue models, depending on social distance guidelines and truncated seasons?). At the <a href="https://www.planfultour.com/planfultouragenda">Planful Virtual Tour</a>, I had the chance to dig in.</p>
<h2>From stressed-out Excel junkies to financial planners</h2>
<p>My concern about pre-recorded sessions: sometimes they are far off the mark of audience interests. When recorded content is tone deaf, there is no way to course correct. But in his Wednesday session, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-zue-3bb403/">Tim Zue</a>, Executive Vice President/CFO at the Boston Red Sox did not disappoint. Zue gave a jugular view of how the Red Sox are impacted - and how modern FP&A tools are helping them figure out what's next.</p>
<p>Zue started with a pre-COVID-19 storyline, how the Red Sox have modernized their data platform. Short version: over the last decade, cumbersome paper-based finance processes have been converted into cloud workflows - with a variety of tools in play. How does Planful fit into that story? By providing Zue's team with a viable transition from the headaches and perils of coordinating Excel spreadsheets - while giving his team an Excel-friendly Planful UI.</p>
<p>Zue emphasized: he could not have gotten his team from Excel to cloud planning without an easy UI transition. We've been documenting Planful's ability to move finance users <a href="https://diginomica.com/spreadsheet-hell-forces-change-as-lt-apparel-adopts-host-analytics">from stressed-out Excel junkies to planners for years now</a>. That leads to user testimonials, like the one Zue showed us from his VP of Financial Planning and Operations:</p>
<blockquote><p>The Planful platform has helped transform our Finance organization into a trusted team of advisors for our executives and senior management team. Additionally, it has enabled us to provide information in a timely manner that is necessary to make critical business decisions that put us in the best position to succeed both on and off the field.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Facing disrupted markets means asking the hard questions</h2>
<p>Fair enough, but with the Coronavirus disruption, that really gets put to the test. How has the move to Planful held up under these market conditions? Zue didn't sugar coat what sports teams are facing:</p>
<blockquote><p>I think all businesses are facing incredible challenges. I don't think there's a single business that's not rethinking their business plan and rethinking what this post-COVID world looks like, whether you're the Boston Red Sox, obviously we're in an industry that is heavily affected, given that our business is defined by large gatherings, and it's going to be a challenge for us, not just this year moving forward, as revenues get challenged in a post-COVID world.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Zue pointed out that even e-commerce behemoth Amazon has plenty of adversity on its plate, addressing worker safety, logistics and distribution center issues.</p>
<blockquote><p>All companies are asking themselves questions as to how they can navigate this crisis.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>What are the top questions? Start with revenue impact:</p>
<blockquote><p>We're trying to understand our revenue outlook for the 2020 season. As a company that derives all of its revenue from hosting baseball games... our revenues are incredibly challenged this year. The players are working through, hopefully, a plan to play some baseball this year, and we're all optimistic that there will be some baseball, but it that starts there.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Crunching scenarios goes beyond this season:</p>
<blockquote><p>We're thinking about "What about 2021," even in a post-COVID vaccine world, certainly people are going to have different ways that they view things... So we're trying to think through, "What does that look like," and trying to think through all the different scenarios, and the uncertainty on the revenue side.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>What's the top cash flow question? For Zue, it's about quickly classifying expenses into "essential" and "non-essential," and hashing that out with line managers. Then the right actions can be taken. Planful played a key role:</p>
<blockquote><p>On the spending side, we're quickly moved to eliminate all non-essential spending. When it became clear, back in March, that we weren't going to be playing baseball with fans anytime soon, we realized we were going to have to get our expenses down to the bare bones of our organization. </p>
<p>Using Planful to do that was really valuable, because we were able to categorize different expenses as essential versus non-essential. We were able to roll those reports up quickly, and show the department managers what we considered essential versus non-essential, and work with them to have an agreement that, "Hey, we're not going to spend this particular expense that we thought we were going to spend."</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In this situation, hard choices are inevitable. But you need to make them in an informed way - and quickly.</p>
<blockquote><p>We've been able to run scenarios and run reporting on the expense side; putting those into buckets was was incredibly valuable as we tried to manage revenue decline, and hopefully mitigate some of those losses with expense [classification and management].</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>My take</h2>
<p>Zue's team knows they must go beyond the purview of finance. Job one: employee well-being.</p>
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<figcaption>(via Planful)</figcaption>
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<p>As he told us:</p>
<blockquote><p>Obviously, this crisis is placing an incredible amount of both physical and mental stress and anxiety. We try to stay connected to our employees, and our employees are obviously the most important people in our organization.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Virtual community makes a difference:</p>
<blockquote><p>We used to host quarterly in-person town hall meetings... We're now doing those virtually once a week, and we're trying to regularly communicate with our people to make sure they feel in touch. For my own department, every other day, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, we have a Zoom meeting with my team. So forty or fifty people get together, and share, communicate, but also check in on people and just make sure that they're feeling okay. That's a really important part of our plans right now.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But how do you plan for long-term sustainability amidst this type of uncertainty? Zue didn't offer any glib answers. He starts with multiple "What if" scenarios:</p>
<blockquote><p>We really don't know what to expect. Because of that, trying to answer questions from ownership about "What does this mean for our business?" is just really challenging. We're working through that; the scenario planning we're able to do in Planful has been tremendously valuable.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>One cloud benefit finance teams are learning about now: ease of remote access. This might seem a no-brainer, but finance folks are often central office workers. Lifting that IT burden is nice, but now, remote access is everything. As Zue said:</p>
<blockquote><p>As long are they have an internet connection, and they can get online,they can work and access reports. And so they don't have to be in the office; they could be on the beach; they could be with their family. Certainly now at home, it's invaluable.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Modern planning tools don't suddenly eliminate industry roadblocks. Just because you can run multiple scenarios with ease doesn't mean the scenarios are appealing. But the way I heard Zue's story, his finance team feels like they're not on the sidelines - they're in the game. And you can't put a price on that right now.</p>
<p>With one more day of Planful's event to go, I'm still gathering stories on the journey to continuous planning (If you want a head start there, check CEO Grant Halloran's diginomica piece, <a href="https://diginomica.com/build-continuous-planning-culture-business">How to build a culture of Continuous Planning in your business</a>). In truth, continuous planning is a continuum, not an end state. For some companies, just getting to a monthly planning cycle is a huge step forward. Then you push further.</p>
<p>I'm also looking into <a href="https://diginomica.com/finance-leaders-had-toss-their-pre-covid-19-plans-so-whats-next-continuous-planning-says-planfuls">stories on Planful Now</a> - how customers are moving quickly to high impact use cases, and the challenges of moving systems in just a few weeks are.</p>
<p>Planful adopted an interesting format for their Virtual Tour, opting for (mostly) pre-recorded sessions, interspersed by a duo of live moderators who set up each session. So far, I have mixed feelings about the format, but then, I am a very tough grader when it comes to my expectations for interactivity at a live event. To address that, Planful has also rolled out an <a href="https://thefpacommunity.slack.com/join/shared_invite/zt-eexauwox-8zLMTuLIdpAVQ2_pj9FISg#/">FP&A Slack channel</a>. I'll look forward to more from attendees on whether that Slack channel enhanced their experience, but in spirit, I like that effort to move beyond passive content consumption.</p>
</div>
<p class="field field--name-field-image-credit field--type-string field--label-inline">
<em>Image credit - Screen captures are via Planful's Virtual Tour event. </em>
</p>
<p class="field field--name-field-disclosure field--type-string-long field--label-inline">
<em>Disclosure - Planful is a diginomica premier partner.</em>
</p>
<div class="field field--name-field-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-inline">
<div class="field__label">Tags</div>
<div class="field__items">
<div class="field__item"><a href="https://diginomica.com/tags/coronavirus" hreflang="en">Coronavirus</a></div>
<div class="field__item"><a href="https://diginomica.com/tags/covid-19" hreflang="en">COVID-19</a></div>
</div>
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<div class="field field--name-field-category node__categories categories">
<span class="categories__label">Read more on: </span> <ul class="categories__list">
<li class="categories__item"><a href="https://diginomica.com/category/ux-application-design/user-experience" hreflang="en">User experience</a></li>
<li class="categories__item"><a href="https://diginomica.com/category/data-analytics-planning" hreflang="en">Analytics planning and data analysis</a></li>
<li class="categories__item"><a href="https://diginomica.com/category/digital-enterprise" hreflang="en">Digital enterprise in the real world</a></li>
<li class="categories__item"><a href="https://diginomica.com/category/digital-enterprise/use-cases" hreflang="en">Use cases</a></li>
</ul>
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Thu, 21 May 2020 02:36:44 +0000Jon Reed22247 at https://diginomica.comNo need to call ‘cut!’ - Workplace from Facebook keeps the National Film and Television School teaching during COVID-19https://diginomica.com/no-need-call-cut-workplace-facebook-keeps-national-film-and-television-school-teaching-during-covid
<span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">No need to call ‘cut!’ - Workplace from Facebook keeps the National Film and Television School teaching during COVID-19</span>
<span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><a title="View user profile." href="https://diginomica.com/author/jtwentyman" class="username">Jessica Twentyman</a></span>
<span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden">Thu, 05/21/2020 - 02:15</span>
<span class="a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_46 addtoany_list" data-a2a-url="https://diginomica.com/no-need-call-cut-workplace-facebook-keeps-national-film-and-television-school-teaching-during-covid" data-a2a-title="No need to call ‘cut!’ - Workplace from Facebook keeps the National Film and Television School teaching during COVID-19"><a class="a2a_button_twitter"></a><a class="a2a_button_facebook"></a><a class="a2a_button_linkedin"></a><a class="a2a_button_reddit"></a><a class="a2a_button_buffer"></a><a class="a2a_button_flipboard"></a></span>
<dl class="node__summary summary">
<dt class="summary__label">Summary: </dt> <dd class="summary__content">
During the current pandemic, students are still learning at the NFTS as Workplace from Facebook takes over in delivering remote training and education.
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<p>Like pretty much every school and college right now, the doors of the National Film and Television School (NFTS) in leafy Beaconsfield, some 25 miles north-west of London, are closed for the foreseeable future. But the school’s director, Jon Wardle, is pleased to report that its 500-plus students are still pushing ahead with their studies.</p>
<p>Filmmaking is all about creative problem-solving and staying reactive to on-set situations, he says, so he’s particularly proud of the ingenuity his team has shown in making sure that the learning continues remotely and that the close-knit school community stays that way, even in the face of the coronavirus pandemic.</p>
<p>Three days before the UK government officially announced a nationwide lockdown, the school was already delivering high-end workstations to the homes and accomodation of students who need them for visual effects, composing or games design work. At the same time, Wardle enlisted celebrated director David Fincher (director of ‘Seven’, ‘Fight Club’ and ‘Gone Girl’, among others) to kick off a coronavirus season of virtual masterclasses via Zoom.</p>
<p>These have continued at a brisk pace of two or three a week, and have attracted a dazzling roster of big names, including Academy Award winning director Steve McQueen (‘Twelve Years a Slave’); ‘The Usual Suspects’ writer and director Christopher McQuarrie; and comedy legend Judd Apatow.</p>
<h2>A sense of community</h2>
<p>The bedrock of the NFTS’s online offering to students is Workplace from Facebook. This was implemented last year, with two primary goals. First, it’s a place where practical information is shared with students, such as class schedules and locations, and information on where to turn for help with accommodation, financial hardship, mental health problems and so on. But also, Workplace also gives students a better view of what their cohorts are working on, at a multidisciplinary institution that covers more than 30 specialist areas, such as cinematography, model making, composing, visual effects, sound design and so on. Says Wardle:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>As the director of the School, I saw all this amazing stuff happening in different departments - but I was also aware that I was probably one of the only people who really saw everything that was going on. If you’re a screenwriting student, you might not feel able to drop into the modelmaking department and see what model makers were doing. If you were in the visual effects department, you didn’t know what the composers were up to. I just wanted to create a space where the 520 or so students and another 100 staff could understand what was happening in other bits of the school, which frankly, is a bit of a rabbit warren of different studio spaces and workshops. </i></p>
<p><i>And that’s definitely happened. Every time the model making course finishes a set or a puppet, for example, they post pictures of it on Workplace - and that’s really powerful for the students, because they get to see what their peers think of their work. I’d like to think that far more students go through the school now seeing what their peers do and understanding better the wide range of roles and specialist skills that go into making films.” </i></p>
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<h2>Remote learning</h2>
<p>Wardle was thrilled, he says, with how quickly students took to the enterprise collaboration platform - but it’s during the current crisis that its value has really come to the fore. There are those masterclasses, of course; the times and Zoom links for these are posted on Workplace, so that all students can participate, along with those for regular seminars and tutorials. At the same time, the Chat function has become an important way for the entire school community to communicate, regardless of location:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>The reality is that, at the moment, a student’s experience at the school is entirely mediated through Workplace - for them, that IS the school right now. Instead of travelling to the campus and walking through the front door in the mornings, they open up Workplace. And right there, they can see their schedule for the day, have a chat with a classmate or member of staff about a project they’re working on, check deadlines for assignments, take a look at what virtual events are open to them.</i></p>
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<p>Since the NFTS is a registered charity, it gets Workplace from Facebook for free - and after a lengthy career in higher education, in which he’s seen his fair share of costly virtual learning environments and cumbersome intranets, that feels “pretty remarkable” to Wardle, he says. Students don’t struggle to use it or to access it via their mobile devices, and staff have really risen to the challenge of using it to deliver new ways of learning:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>There have been practical filming and sound recording exercises that students can complete at home; online demonstrations of lighting live from Cinematography tutors’ houses; group screenings and reviews of student films already in post-production, with sixty-plus staff and students gathering on Zoom to critique work. And Student Services have chipped in by organising mindfulness and meditation sessions. But for me, the most important thing is that students continue to feel supported by the School during this crisis. In fact, they’ve told us that they do, and for me, that means the platform’s working for us.</i></p>
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Thu, 21 May 2020 09:15:24 +0000Jessica Twentyman22249 at https://diginomica.com